Shahar and Shalim

Summary

Shahar and Shalim are twin sons of El on the tablets of Ugarit: Shahar is dawn and Shalim is dusk, and scholars set them beside the morning star and the evening star. Their fullest story is on a tablet called "The Gracious Gods", KTU 1.23, a text that mixes a story with ritual instructions and was recited at a feast.

The story begins when El goes out to the shore of the sea, the shore of the deep. There two women are at a cauldron, one bending down and the other rising; one cries "Father, father!" and the other "Mother, mother!". The text describes El's manhood plainly, making it as long as the sea. He takes the two women to his house, throws his staff into the sky and brings down a bird, plucks it and sets it on the coals. As the bird roasts the women call him now "husband" and now "father", and the text repeats: "The two women are the wives of El, the wives of El for ever". Then he bends and kisses their lips, sweet as pomegranates; "from kissing came conception, from embracing, impregnation", and they bear Shahar and Shalim. Word is brought to El: "The two wives of El have given birth." "What have they borne?" "Shahar and Shalim are born." He orders: "Raise an offering to Shapsh, the Great Lady, and to the stars." Wyatt, pp. 330–333.

Then the women bear "the gracious gods", greedy from birth, sucking at the Lady's breasts: "a lip to the earth and a lip to the heavens, and into their mouths go the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea; they eat with both hands, right and left, and are not satisfied". El tells them: "O wives whom I married, O sons whom I begot, set up a dais in the midst of the holy desert, and there live among the stones and the trees." For seven whole years, eight cycles, the two gods roam the steppe and the edge of the desert, until they meet the guardian of the sown land and cry: "Guardian, guardian, open!" He opens for them and they enter: "If you have food, give us to eat; if you have wine, give us to drink." The guardian answers that he has wine, and the tablet breaks off.

The idea the story turns on is that dawn and dusk are the two ends of the day, born together from one father, their mouth stretching from earth to sky as their light stretches along the horizon, and then they stand at the border between desert and sown land until it is opened to them. Pardee reads their epithet in the tablet as "who delimit the day". Wyatt suggests this is why Shalim comes last among the gods in the lists of Ugarit, as dusk comes last in the day.

We read the names in the Arabic tongue like this. Ugarit wrote them šḥr and šlm, and Canaanite š is answered in these two words by Arabic s. So Shahar is Arabic saḥar, which Lane gives as the time before daybreak, the last part of the night, so called because it is the time when night departs and day comes. Shalim is from salima, salāma and completeness; in Hebrew šālēm is whole, complete, and in Akkadian sunset is called šalām šamši, "the completing of the sun". So Shalim is the completing of the day, the dusk in which the sun is complete and sets. These are the Canaanite essay's readings: saḥar for dawn, and sālim for peace, completeness and dusk.

Linguistic Root

Shahar and saḥar, Shalim and salāma

All three letters of each name are present in Arabic in order; the only difference is š, and it is a regular one: a word that begins with š in Ugaritic and Hebrew in this family begins with s in Arabic, as šlm and salima, šmʿ and samiʿa. Lane gives two times called saḥar: the higher saḥar before the dawn breaks, and the other as it breaks, as one speaks of the false dawn and the true; the word also means whiteness spreading over blackness. That is what Shahar does on the tablet: he is born before his brother or with him, the first light.

Lane gives salima as to be safe, to escape harm, salima min al-ʿayb as to be free of defect, and salām as security. The Akkadian witness adds what the Arabic dictionary does not state outright: the verb šalāmu is to be well and whole and also to reach completion, and its noun šalāmu means the setting of the sun, as in "I conquered that city by sunset", while the Mediterranean is "the sea of the setting sun". The shared sense is that a thing is completed and made whole and so comes to its end, and dusk is the completing of the day.

Their epithet, "the greedy" or "the cutters"

The tablet calls the twins agzrym, which Wyatt and others translate "greedy", comparing a Hebrew verb in Isaiah 9:19 that occurs with eating but basically means to cut and divide; Pardee translates "who delimit the day". Arabic j answers this g as in Dagan, so the root is jazara, which Lane gives as to cut a thing, and jazara al-jazūr, to slaughter and skin a camel. On this reading, proposed on the method, the twins are "the two cutters": they cut off the two ends of the day, and they eat like one who slaughters for himself.

Jerusalem and Shalim

Jerusalem is written in the Egyptian Execration Texts of the nineteenth century BCE in a form read R(a)wušalimum, in the Amarna letters of the fourteenth century u₂-ru-ša₁₀-lim, in Assyrian ur-sa-li-im-mu, and in Hebrew יְרוּשָׁלַם Yərûšālēm. BDB says the root and meaning are uncertain and lists the views: "foundation of peace" or "foundation of Shalem", from the Hebrew verb yārâ, to lay a foundation; "city of Shalim", from a Sumerian word for city; and "possession of peace". The most common among scholars is "foundation of Shalem", supported by Genesis calling Melchizedek "king of Salem" and priest of "El Elyon", while at Ugarit El is Shalim's father, and by Psalm 76 making Salem one with Zion. Huffmon finds the evidence for a cult of Shalim in the city itself weak, and the names Absalom and Solomon more likely names of consolation for a dead relative.

The second part of the name, Shalim, reads clearly. The first we read, as a proposal on the method, from the verb that in Hebrew means to lay a stone and set up a pillar: "who laid the corner-stone thereof" in Job, "the pillar which I have set up" in Genesis, and in the Aramaic of Zinjirli yry, to set, to found. Arabic answers with arrā al-shayʾ, to make a thing firm and established, taʾarrā bi-l-makān, to stay in a place, and āriyy, a beast's place of confinement and the rope it is tied to; in a verse of al-ʿAjjāj lahā āriyy means "having a firm foundation". The Hebrew verb is one of those whose first letter was originally w, and w can become a glottal stop at the head of an Arabic word, as in warrakha and arrakha. On this reading Jerusalem is "the firm seat of Shalim", the place laid down for Shalim, where he stays. It remains to be learned whether the first part was a Semitic verb or the Sumerian word for city.

Key Mythic Narratives

The rite around the story

The tablet opens with an invocation, "Let me invoke the gracious and beautiful gods", then tells those present to eat of the food and drink of the wine, and greets them: "Peace to you, king; peace to you, queen, priests and temple servants." Between parts of the story, lines order the passage to be recited seven times on the dais, coriander to be cooked in milk over the fire seven times, and incense to be burned on the cauldron seven times. Wyatt notes that scholars disagree about the rite: a fertility feast, a liturgy against famine, or, in Pardee's view, a vintage and New Year festival; Wyatt himself sees a royal wedding in it.

Shahar and Shalim in spells and lists

In the snakebite spell KTU 1.100 the mare sends her voice through Shapsh "to Shahar and Shalim in heaven", and they do not drive the venom off. In KTU 1.107 the prayer is "let Shahar and Shalim gather the poison". In the god lists they come as one pair among pairs, while Shalim alone comes last in the list and receives offerings. Shahar was worshipped at Emar on the Euphrates with gods of the underworld and with the storm god, and in the old inscriptions of South Arabia he is paired with ʿAthtar.

The son of the dawn in Isaiah

In Isaiah 14 the prophet mocks the king of Babylon as he falls to the underworld: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O day-star, son of the morning", hêlēl ben šāḥar; he had said in his heart, I will ascend into heaven, raise my throne above the stars of El, sit on the mount of meeting in the far north, and be like the Most High. Parker thinks these words keep a lost myth in which Shahar is the father of the morning star. Job speaks of "the eyelids of the dawn", and Psalm 139 of "the wings of the dawn".

Symbolic Reading

The Canaanite essay reads Shahar as the god of dawn and first light, the image of a new beginning, hope and good news, and Shalim as the god of dusk, evening, peace and rest, the image of the day's end, stillness and completion; together they are "the divine division of the day", dawn against dusk as life against death in Baal and Mot.

The tablet itself brings nature and human life together. The old father marries by the sea, and offerings are raised to the sun and the stars when his sons are born, so their birth is the birth of light at the two edges of the day. Then they become hungry guests at the gate of the sown land, asking its guardian for food and wine, a scene the people of the Levant knew: steppe dwellers at the edge of the fields asking the owner of the land for food. Wyatt sees the twins as "royal gods" and the story as a model of the chief god's care for the world, carried out by the kings descended from him.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

KTU 1.23 is a wedding recited at a feast, which Wyatt calls "a sacred marriage liturgy", so it belongs to the sacred marriage beside the wedding of Yarikh and Nikkal, the other wedding on the Ugarit tablets. The two weddings differ: Yarikh pays the bride-price on the scales, while El takes the two women on the seashore with a bird he roasts. In Sumer Iddin-Dagan sings of Inanna as "the lady of the evening" when the Venus star rises at evening, and then tells of her wedding to the king; there the evening star and the goddess's wedding come together, as dusk and wedding come together at Ugarit. In Isaiah the son of the dawn becomes a proud king who falls from heaven, joining the stories of those who reach for the throne of heaven and fall.

In India dawn and night are two sisters walking one road by turns, never clashing and never standing still, and the Indian essay reads the dawn's name once from ʿishāʾ, nightfall, as the Canaanite essay reads Shahar from saḥar; see Uṣas.